Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

ante el mundo, con perfecta soltura su convicción, su condición de ser
libre y artificial de hombre-mujer, su sexo inventado, su imaginación sin
orejeras. (El Paraíso 472) 64
In this depictive ekphrasis, central elements of the painting are mentioned
and described in terms of how they stand in relation to each other, as well as what
they look like or what impression they give the viewer. This depiction is
qualitatively important since it takes up one of the central themes of the novel,
different attitudes to sex and gender, thus contributing to the novel’s interpretation
of Gauguin and his oeuvre. The description highlights the contrast between what
Vargas Llosa’s Gauguin sees as the Western, Catholic, civilized inhibition
represented by the nun, and the Tahitian, uncivilized “man-woman” who is free
even to chose his own sex. Not only has Gauguin in this novel been persistently
fascinated by these men-women, but also with how to represent the Tahitian
sexual and personal freedom to show their superiority to Western civilization.
Many instances of depictive ekphrasis occur in Lion Feuchtwanger’s
novel Goya oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951), most of them from the
narrator’s perspective (the characters’ ekphrases are mostly of the next category,
interpretive). A painting that functions in this novel as beginning of Goya’s new
style and political attitude, the Portrait of Doña Lucía, is described by the narrator
in its process of creation:
Von der Leinwand schaute eine Dame, sehr hübsch, das längliche Gesicht
leicht maskenhaft und spöttisch, die Augen weit auseinanderstehend unter
64 “Swathed in wimple, habit, and veil, and symbolizing terror of the body, freedom, nudity, and
nature, a nun from the Catholic mission stood in contrast to a half-naked mahu, who, with perfect
ease and assurance, faced the world as a free, artificial man-woman, his sex invented, his
imagination unfettered” (The Way 363).
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